Yesterday’s blog entry contained the text of an e-mail that I sent to academic researcher Wade Pfau on Dec. 16, 2010.
Wade sent me an e-mail in response saying that: “I’m sorry for offending you. I’ve removed that post from Bogleheads. I will think about adding a new post to start over later and to express your accomplishments differently.”
Wade told me that he did not view his post as defamatory. He said that he had read enough material at the Bogleheads board to know that I was not well liked “by them” and noted that I had been referred to at the board as a person who could not be named. He added that he tried to be respectful to me in his post. He argued that most of his comments about me were positive and explained that “I was just trying to give you credit for your contributions in the context of knowing that this will not be well received at Bogleheads.”
Wade maintained that the negatives he used in reference to me “I don’t think are so negative” because “I think you were really on to something.” However, he added that “the thing that troubled me was how sure you were about your predictions, and how you asserted the correctness of those predictions in the face of criticism.”
At that point, the e-mail turned to a specific point. John Walter Russell’s research showed that, at the top of the bull market, the safe withdrawal rate for a retirement portfolio with an 80 percent stock allocation was 1.6 percent real. Wade observed that: “That 1.6 is not a point estimate from the regression, but the lower bound of a confidence interval that has to be defined in a fuzzy way because correct confidence intervals cannot be estimated due to the overlapping observations problem. That means there has to be some doubt about the correct number. ”
Wade concluded his e-mail by apologizing for offending me but suggested that I had overreacted. Overall, “I was trying to pay tribute to your accomplishments in what I knew would be a hostile environment.”
Finally, the e-mail states that “I think we are basically on the same side.” Wade said that he had not looked at the links set forth in my e-mail to him but that he hoped to do so soon.
Rob
Heh, once Wade figured out the ‘side’ you were on was deep into crazy land I am pretty sure these email exchanges came to a predictably screeching halt.
Or else he got caught up in all that crazy historical data and put out some crazy new academic research.
Rob
One would think he could do both? Are you saying he isn’t emailing any of his other ‘friends’? Especially one of whom claims responsibility for saving the entire Universe and being the basis of Wade’s work?
Wade has done wonderful work, What. He is the most important researcher in this field today, in my assessment.
An old friend of mine named “John Greaney” went berserk when I put up a post at a Motley Fool discussion board pointing out the analytical errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies (John had posted such a study at his web site). John has spent the last 10 years of his life organizing smear campaigns against the hundreds of people who have checked and confirmed my findings in the years since:
http://www.s152957355.onlinehome.us/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?board=HOCO
Wade is one of the people who confirmed my findings. The Greaney Goons threatened to get Wade fired from his job by sending defamatory e-mails to his employer. Wade is aware that the G Goons and the Lindauerheads (a second group of goons headed up by Mel Lindauer — Mel said positive things about the Greaney study in a book he wrote about investing) have followed through on such threats in the past. So be became scared re the effect that posting honestly on this matter would have on his family and he has for a time stopped doing research on valuation-related questions.
The next price crash is in all likelihood going to put us in the Second Great Depression, What. I have a funny feeling that being in a Second Great Depression is going to melt the hearts of a good number of the Buy-and-Holders and that we will be able to open the internet up to honest posting on SWRs and all sorts of other critically important topics. He will be back to happily e-mailing all his friends at that time.
My best wishes to you.
Rob